The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant economic disruption, including supply shortages, cost increases, and liquidity constraints resulting from a prolonged shutdown. As EU Member States and businesses respond to these challenges, their actions continue to raise potential issues under EU competition law.

In response, the Commission has undertaken several initial steps, as reported in our March 2020 EU Competition Law Newsletter. In April 2020, the following additional steps are noteworthy:

• The Commission has affirmed it will not actively pursue necessary and temporary measures taken by companies to avoid a shortage of supply during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has published guidance on how it will analyze such business cooperation and has offered to provide informal guidance for specific situations if businesses so request. An overview of this guidance, and key takeaways for companies, is available here.
• State aid. The Commission issued a Communication amending the Temporary Framework that both clarified and relaxed its earlier guidelines. An update on this development is available here. By the end of April, the Commission had cleared more than 109 measures under these rules, for every Member State except The Commission is also consulting Member States on a draft proposal to extend these measures to recapitalizations.

These initiatives mirror actions by national competition agencies and other enforcers globally. These developments are monitored in our COVID- 19 Resource Center. The table below provides an overview of measures published since our March 2020 EU Competition Law Newsletter.